“Perhaps it’s been unfair of me,” De Medici smiled tiredly, “but I’ve been holding something from you. A woman entered my bedroom last night just about the time you captured your Floria in Rollo—and tried to kill me. She caught me in the arm with a dagger. I fainted, and when I awoke I found a crucifix on my chest and a candle burning at my head.”
The scientist’s eyes widened. He nodded as if weighing this evidence and then remarked curtly:
“I can only say, Julien, that you’ve gone mad. You’ve been the victim of hallucinations. The Floria image has been in your mind so long and so vividly that it finally materialized into an optical illusion.”
“There was a wound—and blood,” muttered De Medici.
“A self-inflicted attack,” Dr. Lytton answered curtly. “How long are you going to wait for this visitor of yours?”
De Medici had given instructions to his man, Harding, to admit any caller without hesitation. Listening to the doctor, he stiffened. He had heard an outer door open.
“Sh-h,” he murmured.
There was a long pause. Dr. Lytton followed the fixed gaze of his friend, and both men sat watching the door that opened into the curtained room. Slowly De Medici rose. The door was opening.
A tall, burning-eyed creature in a preposterous dress that dropped a silken train behind her stood on the threshold. Dr. Lytton had moved excitedly.
“Quiet!” De Medici whispered, seizing his arm. “Here is Floria.”